Scott Detrow

Editor's note: This story is adapted from reporting for the podcast Sacred Ground by NPR's Scott Detrow and WITF's Tim Lambert.

President Biden said on Friday that his administration is focused on getting Americans out of Afghanistan by Aug. 31 but that he was also committed to trying to evacuate as many Afghan interpreters and others who assisted the U.S. government — a goal that he said was "equally important, almost" to evacuating Americans.

President Biden proposed a rule on Wednesday that would change the way the federal government assesses products made in America.

As security conditions deteriorate in Afghanistan, President Biden is defending his decision to pull U.S. troops out of America's longest-running war.

Biden announced the decision in April, and he insisted Thursday that he will stick to it, even as the consequences of that withdrawal become more and more stark.

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden have a date with the queen.

Buckingham Palace has announced the Bidens will visit Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle on June 13 after the president takes part in a G-7 summit in Cornwall, England, and ahead of his NATO meetings in Brussels and high-stakes summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva. The White House says Biden will also meet with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson while in England.

The same Russian hackers who carried out the SolarWinds attack and other malicious campaigns have now attacked groups involved in international development, human rights and other issues, according to Microsoft. The company said the breach began with a takeover of an email marketing account used by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet face-to-face in Geneva on June 16, their first summit as Biden looks for what he calls a more "stable, predictable relationship" despite the many points of conflict between the two nations.

Biden will sit down with Putin on the back end of his first foreign trip as president, following a G-7 meeting in the United Kingdom and a NATO summit in Belgium.

In what appears to be a mostly symbolic step toward finding common ground with Senate Republicans, the Biden administration has lowered its spending proposal on its infrastructure and jobs proposal, from more than $2 trillion to $1.7 trillion.

As Hamas rockets have rained down on Israeli cities, Israeli airstrikes and artillery have crumbled buildings in the Gaza Strip, and violent mobs have attacked one another in Israel's streets, President Biden has remained mostly muted about the escalating crisis.

With a 50-50 Senate and a paper-thin Democratic majority in the House, Louisa Terrell would have a tough job no matter what.

But the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has created a lot of unique challenges for the director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs.

"You're not able to do the pull-asides you can do in an Easter egg roll [event], when people are there with their families — a great way to connect," Terrell told NPR. "Members are not roaming the halls all the time."

With college classes going online because of COVID-19, Joe Spofforth put his double major in political economies and educational studies on hold to move West and find work. When the pandemic was over, he'd go back.

"You can get real into this stuff," the 21-year-old Ohioan said, grinning at his mountain surroundings as his fellow Montana Conservation Corps crew members saw, chop and lop branches and logs away from a dirt path — trail work.

Standing, unshowered, in the shade of a tall stand of lodgepole pine in northwest Montana, he said it's a bit scary though.

For all of the statecraft that went into it, President Biden's virtual climate summit this week ultimately boiled down to one thing: the diplomatic version of a grand romantic gesture.

Biden needed to prove that the United States was committed to its relationship with the global coalition fighting climate change. To show that he knew the country had strayed before, but this time, other nations could trust that the U.S. was really serious about making it work.

President Biden opened a global summit on climate change Thursday morning by announcing that the United States will aim to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in half, based on 2005 levels, by the end of the decade.

That aggressive 2030 goal, which the White House is framing as a "50-52 percent reduction," will be formalized in a document called a "nationally determined contribution," or NDC.

President Biden, joined by top foreign and domestic policy advisers, met virtually with 19 CEOs Monday, as his administration tries to deal with a critical supply crunch that is slowing U.S. automobile manufacturing and threatens other sectors, including national security, according to experts.

President Biden on Wednesday will unveil a sprawling, ambitious infrastructure proposal that, if enacted, would overhaul how Americans get from Point A to Point B, how their electricity is generated, the speed of their Internet connections, the quality of their water and the physical makeup of their children's schools.

The measure, called the American Jobs Plan, includes big infrastructure fixes that both major parties — as well as a majority of Americans — consistently say they want to see, including upgrades to bridges, broadband and buildings.

Georgia elections official Gabriel Sterling gained national attention a few months ago by pushing back against President Donald Trump's false claims of voter fraud.

But Republican state lawmakers in Georgia, inspired by those falsehoods, have introduced a handful of bills that would increase barriers to voting for some people.

As Republicans in statehouses across the country introduce hundreds of bills raising barriers to vote, President Biden is issuing a new executive order signaling his administration's commitment to expanding, not shrinking, voting access and rights.

Updated at 11:20 a.m. ET

President Biden wasn't many progressives' first, second, third — or maybe even 20th — choice in the crowded 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

But ever since winning the party's nomination last spring amid the onset of the global pandemic and economic downturn, Biden has vowed to govern as the most progressive president since Franklin Roosevelt. He's even made a large portrait of FDR the centerpiece of his Oval Office to underscore that goal.

Updated at 6:45 p.m. ET

President Biden and Vice President Harris acknowledged a grim milestone Monday: the deaths of more than 500,000 Americans from COVID-19.

Biden and Harris, along with first lady Jill Biden and second gentleman Doug Emhoff, emerged from the White House at sundown. They stood at the foot of the South Portico, covered in 500 candles honoring the dead, and listened to a Marine Corps band play "Amazing Grace" as they held a moment of silence.

Updated at 2:30 p.m. ET

In an effort to slow the nation's contribution to climate change, President Biden has signed an executive order to begin halting oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters.

The much-anticipated move is one of several executive actions the president took on Wednesday to address the worsening climate crisis and the broader decline of the natural world, but it won't come without pushback.

Updated at 2:15 p.m. ET

President Biden on Monday repealed a controversial Trump-era ban on transgender people serving in the U.S. military.

Biden signed an executive order on the issue as he met in the Oval Office with new Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and Vice President Harris.

Speaking briefly to reporters, Biden said the order will allow all "qualified Americans to serve their country in uniform."

President-elect Joe Biden teared up twice Tuesday afternoon as he said goodbye to his adopted home state of Delaware and prepared to fly to Washington, D.C., to assume the presidency.

Paraphrasing, as he often does, Irish literature, Biden paused for several moments as he told a small, socially distanced crowd at a National Guard center named after his son Beau that "when I die, Delaware will be written on my heart."

Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will step down from her California Senate seat Monday before taking up a more high-profile position in the chamber two days later, transition officials have announced.